Olympics

A U.S. Olympic swimmer, Mick Jones, has reportedly contracted malaria while practicing for his events in Rio, swimming in public, open water.

“It is with great sadness that we report that Mr. Jones will not be able to compete at this year’s olympic games,” said chairman Richard Downs. “He is a champion competitor, and we wish him all the best in his recovery.”

The Olympic Committee was warned of hosting the games in Rio, which is rife with crime and has some of the most polluted waters in the world.

“We wanted to host it somewhere new and exciting, and even though their environment, their economy, and their people cannot handle the influx, we decided to go on with the ceremony anyway,” said Downs. “I believe that this event is isolated, and we will do whatever we can to make sure that the athletes are safe.

Analysts fear tensions with the Russians could lead to another war if the Russians are banned from participating in the Olympic games. The Russian sports minister says “up to 67 athletes” have applied to track and field’s world governing body to be exempted from the ban on the Russian team at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics

The IAAF is unlikely to approve most of the 67 athletes, since it has previously indicated the exemption is aimed at a small minority of athletes based abroad.

When a global governing body for sports barred Russia’s track and field team from the 2016 Summer Olympics on Friday over a wide-ranging doping scandal, it was greeted in Russia, as is with a deep sense of victimhood.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called the decision “unjust, of course.”

Outside Russia, sporting officials viewed the unanimous decision as a long overdue restoration of some fairness in competitions. After all, in some sporting events Russian athletes had been trouncing competitors for years before it turned out they were using performance-enhancing drugs.

Actors immerse themselves in roles to varying degrees; some of the lesser or tired actors “phone it in,” while others go to extremes to create realistic portrayals.

Celebrity heartthrob Channing Tatum (22 Jump Street) definitely falls into the latter category, as he has announced today that he will be undergoing breast augmentation surgery for his role in Magic Mike XXL.

Tatum jumped at the chance to take on the challenge. “I didn’t hesitate for a second when my manager told me the storyline for the sequel. I didn’t read the script first, I didn’t even ask what the terms were for my salary. I just said ‘yes’ when I heard about the breasts. I can’t wait to start working on this new role. I want big ones, as big as possible! I asked the doctor to ‘Pam Anderson’ me,” said Tatum.

According to studio executives, Magic Mike XXL follows the continuing story of the character from the first film, Magic Mike, as he goes from being a sexy male stud stripper to a femme-fatale exotic dancer. The first film, which also starred Matthew McConaughey, made almost $114 million dollars back on its small, $7 million budget.

Tatum’s Hollywood star has risen in recent years, and this role undoubtedly will cement his status as a solid dramatic actor. “I remember when Robert De Niro gained all that weight for that boxing movie,” said Tatum, and “Tyler Perry literally transforms himself into that big, scary, fat old African-American lady, but I decided to have my physical body altered on the inside, which I think will be great for my career.”

Tatum’s new breasts will be implanted in February 2015, and the surgeon performing the augmentation has agreed to donate the proceeds to the Susan B. Komen For The Cure breast cancer awareness foundation. Breast cancer is suffered by both women and men.

“My fans seem to be pretty accepting,” said the actor. “Thousands of brand new fans can’t wait to see the results, and they’re literally begging me to send them photos! Did you know I have a fan club at San Quentin? I didn’t, but in any case, I’m really stoked to get stacked!”

Once a year, volunteers who live near and along the great Ohio River participate in an event dubbed “The Annual Ohio River Sweep,” which extends the entire length of the massive waterway, from Pittsburgh, PA to Cairo, Illinois. Organizers said when the River Sweep started 25 years ago, finding items like washing machines, cars, and sunken fishing vessels was common.

“We’re not finding any of the large objects anymore, but we are finding what I call lots of ‘convenience items.’ A lot of the pop bottles, a lot of the plastic bags. So there is still a lot of work to be done on the Ohio River,” said River Sweep coordinator Lisa Cochran.

This year the great sweep fell on June 21. It was business as usual for volunteers from state to state, that is, except for one man. Robert Bradbury was born, raised and has lived his entire life in the thriving city of Louisville, Kentucky. Home of boxing great and humanitarian Muhammad Ali. What he found during the Sweep is most definitely one of the more mysterious and infamous pieces of sports hardware in American history.

“I saw something round and fairly large – well, bigger than any coin I know of, sticking out of the mud. I went to retrieve it and I realized it was a medallion of some kind,” Bradbury said. “As a joke, I walked over to my wife Pattie and told her ‘Hey I found Ali’s gold medal that he threw off the Second Street bridge in 1960!’ We both laughed as I tried to get it clean enough to make out what the design was on the thing.”

It was when he started to make out a figure on the medallion that Robert started to wonder what it really was.

“I finally rubbed the thing off enough so that I could see an image on the medallion, it almost looked to me like some ancient Roman God or something, then it clicked, I looked at my wife and said, ‘Oh dear Lord, the 1960 Olympics were in Rome!’ The thing totally looked Roman to me so I started to get excited. She told me to calm down because most medallions have that kind of design on them.”

It turns out that his wife was wrong, and there was a definite reason to get excited.

After about a week of searching for an appraiser, they located an Olympic Medal collector and expert living in Indianapolis, Indiana. So they made the two-and-a-half hour drive to meet Wade Somerville, who has been collecting Olympic Medals for fifteen years. Somerville used a special cleaning solution designed specifically for fragile, valuable precious metals.

“Not five minutes went by before he lit up like a Christmas tree, turned and said to us ‘What you have here, is an authentic 1960 Olympic Gold Medal. This thing is the real deal.'” The three of them were speechless. They all knew the old story.

Ali, then named Cassius Clay, cherished his gold medal from the 1960 Olympics so much that he wore it all the time, even while sleeping. Then one day, sickened by a horrific bout of racism he encountered that evening, the 18-year-old light- heavyweight boxing champion stood on the Second Street Bridge and threw the medal into the Ohio River.

He never revealed the story until a documentary was made about him in 1975, and he explained what happened. For various reasons, however, people seemed to want to believe he was making the story up to get a rise out of his fans and the Olympic committee, just being dramatic as he always was. The incident took place in the fall of 1960. Fast-forward fifty-four years. June 21, 2014, Robert Bradbury pulls an authentic 1960 Olympic Gold Medal from the muddy banks of the Ohio River.

“There is no doubt in my mind that this is the very gold medal Cassius Clay threw off that bridge. It is the most amazing thing I could possibly see with my own eyes!” said Somerville.

“I was like, ‘Oh Lord, now what do we do?'” Bradbury revealed. “We decided the only right thing to do was somehow contact the Ali family, so we went to the Muhammad Ali Center and swiftly handed it over to the curator. They were extremely excited as you could imagine and treated us like royalty.”

About a week went by when the Bradbury’s received a phone call from Chief Curator Sarah Lynn Jeffcoat, she asked the couple to meet them down at the Center as soon as possible. When they finally arrived, they were amazed by what was waiting for them. A check, written by the Ali family for the sum of $200,000.

“We both just burst into tears,” said Bradbury. “It is such an amazing thing to be actually now be a part of this amazing human-being’s story. We are linked with him for eternity, and they could not have been more thankful and appreciative. They have reached out and changed our lives forever, we are so grateful!”